Private Sector Participation in the Provision of Quality Drinking Water in Ghana's Urban Areas: Are People Willing to Pay?

Access to clean drinking water is not only a fundamental human right, but also claims a big stake in economic growth, poverty reduction and sustainable development. With an increase in population, rapid urbanization and increasing income levels, the demand for water outstrips public water supply in developing countries. As a result, private water production has been promoted in developing countries to achieve greater efficiency and expansion in order to supplement public water supply. This study used the contingent valuation method to survey households in three cities in Ghana to estimate their willingness to pay in a bid to evaluate a policy of better water supply for urban areas in Ghana. It was found that more than 80% of the respondents favour some form of private sector engagement in water quality improvement. Also, the mean willingness to pay for water quality improvement is about GH¢13.42 (US$12) per month. Given the mean household monthly water bill of GH¢10.82, these results indicate that there is demand for water quality improvement and the general view is that private sector engagement is likely to provide these services. However, the same policy measure will marginalize the poor in terms of access to water. Therefore, private sector participation in water delivery, with a corresponding complementary government programme to promote access to water among low income households, would deliver the double dividends of water quality and universal access, which characterize the debate on private sector engagement in water provision in Ghana

Expert assessment of risks posed by climate change and anthropogenic activities to ecosystem services in the deep North Atlantic

Sustainable development of the ocean is a central policy objective in Europe through the Blue Growth Strategy and globally through parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity. Achieving sustainable exploitation of deep sea resources is challenged due to the huge uncertainty around the many risks posed by human activities on these remote ecosystems and the goods and services they provide. We used a Delphi approach, an iterative expert-based survey process, to assess risks to ecosystem services in the North Atlantic Ocean from climate change (water temperature and ocean acidification), the blue economy (fishing, pollution, oil and gas activities, deep seabed mining, maritime and coastal tourism and blue biotechnology), and their cumulative effects. Ecosystem services from the deep sea, identified through the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment framework, were presented in an expert survey to assess the impacts of human drivers on these services. The results from this initial survey were analyzed and then presented in a second survey. The final results, based on 55 expert responses, indicated that pollution and temperature change each pose a high risk to more than 28% of deep-sea ecosystem services, whilst ocean acidification, and fisheries both pose a high risk to more than 19% of the deep-sea ecosystem services. Services considered to be most at risk of being impacted by anthropogenic activities were biodiversity and habitat as supporting services, biodiversity as a cultural service, and fish and shellfish as provisioning services. Tourism and blue biotechnology were not seen to cause serious risk to any of the ecosystem services. The negative impacts from temperature change, ocean acidification, fishing, pollution, and oil and gas activities were deemed to be largely more probable than their positive impacts. These results expand our knowledge of how a broad set of deep-sea ecosystem services are impacted by human activities. Furthermore, the study provides input in relation to future priorities regarding research in the Atlantic deep sea

Nudging Boserup? The impact of fertilizer subsidies on investment in soil and water conservation

The new fertilizer subsidies in Sub-Saharan Africa are intended to increase agricultural production and ensure fertilizer market development. Fertilizer adoption requires complementary inputs such as investment in soil and water conservation for efficient and optimal nutrient uptake, and many fertilizer subsidy programmes implicitly assume that fertilizer subsidies crowd in such investments. The present study, therefore, evaluates the impact of fertilizer subsidies on the provision of soil and water conservation efforts in Ghana. The results indicate that beneficiaries of the studied fertilizer subsidy programme do not invest significantly more in soil and water conservation, which advises against excessive reliance on farmers to respond to fertilizer subsidies with substantial investment in soil and water conservation. Thus, in order to achieve increased investment in soil and water conservation for sustainable agricultural development, more comprehensive measures that include these investments explicitly (such as integrated soil fertility management programmes) may be needed.JEL classification: N57; Q15; Q1

What do respondents bring into contingent valuation? A comparison of monetary and labour payment vehicles

In the Contingent Valuation Method (CVM), both the goods being valued and the payment vehicles used to value them are mostly hypothetical. However, although numerous studies have examined the impact of experience with the good on the willingness to pay, less attention has been given to experience with the payment vehicles. This paper examines how experience with payment vehicles influences responses to a CV scenario on the maintenance of irrigation canals. Specifically, the paper uses a split-sample survey to investigate the effects of experience with monetary and labour payment vehicles on the acceptance of a CV scenario and protest bids. Using convergent validity tests, we found that experience acquired from using both monetary and labour payment vehicles reduces the asymmetries in acceptance rates. These findings suggest that experience with payment vehicles reduces time/money response asymmetries in the CVM.JEL classification: Q51; Q5

Farmers´ preferences for reductions in flood risk under monetary and non-monetary payment modes

We use a split-sample choice experiment to investigate the effects of alternative payment modes on the purchase of flood insurance among smallholder irrigation farmers in Ghana. Results show that insurance up-take is lower for insurance premium payments required in labour than comparable premiums required in harvest and money. The marginal willingness-to-pay for a one-year reduction in flood frequency is about 6 h in labour time, 30 kg in rice and 144 Ghana Cedis (US$37) per annum. The price elasticities of demand for flood insurance indicate an inelastic demand for insurance premiums under these three payment modes. In addition to revealing strong preferences for flood risk reduction among farmers in this region, these results imply that subsidy policies may be inadequate in increasing the purchase of weather insurance under these three payment modes.publishedVersio

What do respondents bring into contingent valuation? A comparison of monetary and labour payment vehicles

In the Contingent Valuation Method (CVM), both the goods being valued and the payment vehicles used to value them are mostly hypothetical. However, although numerous studies have examined the impact of experience with the good on the willingness to pay, less attention has been given to experience with the payment vehicles. This paper examines how experience with payment vehicles influences responses to a CV scenario on the maintenance of irrigation canals. Specifically, the paper uses a split-sample survey to investigate the effects of experience with monetary and labour payment vehicles on the acceptance of a CV scenario and protest bids. Using convergent validity tests, we found that experience acquired from using both monetary and labour payment vehicles reduces the asymmetries in acceptance rates. These findings suggest that experience with payment vehicles reduces time/money response asymmetries in the CVM.contingent valuation; payment vehicles; numéraires; experience

Nudging Boserup? The impact of fertilizer subsidies on investment in soil and water conservation

The new fertilizer subsidies in Sub-Saharan Africa are intended to increase agricultural production and ensure fertilizer market development. Fertilizer adoption requires complementary inputs such as investment in soil and water conservation for efficient and optimal nutrient uptake, and many fertilizer subsidy programmes implicitly assume that fertilizer subsidies crowd in such investments. The present study, therefore, evaluates the impact of fertilizer subsidies on the provision of soil and water conservation efforts in Ghana. The results indicate that beneficiaries of the studied fertilizer subsidy programme do not invest significantly more in soil and water conservation, which advises against excessive reliance on farmers to respond to fertilizer subsidies with substantial investment in soil and water conservation. Thus, in order to achieve increased investment in soil and water conservation for sustainable agricultural development, more comprehensive measures that include these investments explicitly (such as integrated soil fertility management programmes) may be needed.soil and water conservation; soil fertility; fertilizer subsidy; endogenous switching

Farmers´ preferences for reductions in flood risk under monetary and non-monetary payment modes

We use a split-sample choice experiment to investigate the effects of alternative payment modes on the purchase of flood insurance among smallholder irrigation farmers in Ghana. Results show that insurance up-take is lower for insurance premium payments required in labour than comparable premiums required in harvest and money. The marginal willingness-to-pay for a one-year reduction in flood frequency is about 6 h in labour time, 30 kg in rice and 144 Ghana Cedis (US$37) per annum. The price elasticities of demand for flood insurance indicate an inelastic demand for insurance premiums under these three payment modes. In addition to revealing strong preferences for flood risk reduction among farmers in this region, these results imply that subsidy policies may be inadequate in increasing the purchase of weather insurance under these three payment modes

Farmers´ preferences for reductions in flood risk under monetary and non-monetary payment modes

We use a split-sample choice experiment to investigate the effects of alternative payment modes on the purchase of flood insurance among smallholder irrigation farmers in Ghana. Results show that insurance up-take is lower for insurance premium payments required in labour than comparable premiums required in harvest and money. The marginal willingness-to-pay for a one-year reduction in flood frequency is about 6 h in labour time, 30 kg in rice and 144 Ghana Cedis (US$37) per annum. The price elasticities of demand for flood insurance indicate an inelastic demand for insurance premiums under these three payment modes. In addition to revealing strong preferences for flood risk reduction among farmers in this region, these results imply that subsidy policies may be inadequate in increasing the purchase of weather insurance under these three payment modes

Bioeconomic model of spatial fishery management in developing countries

Fishers in developing countries do not have the resources to acquire advanced technologies to exploit offshore fish stocks. As a result, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea requires countries to sign partnership agreements with distant water fishing nations (DWFNs) to exploit offshore stocks. However, for migratory stocks, the offshore may serve as a natural marine reserve (i.e., a source) to the inshore (i.e., sink); hence these partnership agreements generate spatial externality. In this paper, we present a bioeconomic model in which a social planner uses a landing tax (ad valorem tax) to internalize this spatial externality. We found that the tax must reflect the biological connectivity between the two patches, intrinsic growth rate, the price of fish, cost per unit effort and social discount rate. The results are empirically illustrated using data on Ghana